Knowledge Commuter - A railway station that stimulates the reinterpretation of cultural heritage

University of Moratuwa (UoM), Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Moratuwa

Project idea

The stupa is a prominent religious architectural element in Sri Lanka that has risen up many paths to socio-cultural advancement. Kalutara, a city with iconic hollow shell stupa is now facing the reconstruction stage of its infrastructure such as railway station. My attempt at this railway station building design is to experiment on how to derive a new construction trend with shell structures. Inspiring from the hollow shell dome in Kalutara stupa, my design idea is to 'interpret another dimension of shell structures that suits to the socio-economic background of Sri Lanka' by using precast technology. With my design, I am attempting to explore the abilities of shell structures and to pronounce them to society.
The idea is to share the knowledge of shell structures and to aware the public about the possibilities of precast shell structures. As an approach for my design idea, the joineries and the construction details of the structure are exhibited through the building.

Project description

The transportation system is the main factor that connects the community. This connection is much worthy even to change the attitude of a whole society and to make a valuable impact on the social, cultural and economic pattern of society. A railway station is a community gathering area that does not imply any racial or religious separations. To achieve my goal of sharing knowledge about shell concrete structure, railway station building act as an exhibit itself.
Most of the Sri Lankan railway station buildings at present were built during the colonial period and they have a valuable character of colonial architecture. But today requirement cannot be satisfied by those buildings which were designed for 100 years past. So when we come to the stage of reconstruction of railway stations, we are facing two major problems. They are, should we keep the old building and how we carry out the construction process while not disturbing the transportation layout. So I came up with an idea of precast shell concrete panels which can be constructed out of the site without disturbing the transportation process and assembled in the site. This construction process will help to save much time as well as much labor cost.
Sri Lanka is a country where the dome structure is vastly seen in religious architecture. Inspiring from the shape, my idea was to create a module of the construction process which is more stable and viable in terms of economy and space.

Technical information

The ‘Kalutara stupa’ which is the icon of the city, is also a great example that drives me towards the idea of exhibiting building construction systems. The large span hollow structure with no internal vertical members disturbing the spaces is an ideal choice for a railway station. In a railway station, people need to move hurry. Therefore large open spaces act well in this kind of place. So I came up with the idea of using a shell construction system.
By allowing the construction joineries and details to exposed, my idea was to share the Knowledge on a thin-shell concrete building construction system.
With the Tsunami 2004, the land strips on either side of the railway station have been wasted and currently not used by the people. So with my masterplan, I promoted these two land areas as two beach park areas. And a paved pathway is designed to connect the two beach park areas. The upper land area is to be used by the temple users and the lower land area is provided with entertainment facilities for the public.
The station building is oriented along the seashore and parallel to the existing building. This will result in the new station building act as a backdrop to the existing station building.
The open structure allows wind currents to blow through the building and it optimizes the ventilation. The rough concrete texture of the shell panels is changing with height to reduce the noise level.
The construction process
Precast concrete panels are being cast in the Ratmalana railway yard (central and largest railway back yard).
Then we have to lay the foundations for the shell structures in platform 1 (at this time period train will move only in the third platform).
Then the panels are transported to the Railway station site by train.
Concrete panels are assembled to form one linear set of shell structures.
After finishing the first platform, second and third platforms are constructed.
After completion of two rows of shell structures middle concrete panels are laid and tied with the tension cables.
Finally, the administration works are moved to the new building and the existing old station building is modified as the public restaurant.